Breaking: NPR board ousts Vivian Schiller

posted at 9:56 am on March 9, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Did she jump — or did she get pushed? NPR announced the resignation of Vivian Schiller this morning, but the Daily Caller read the Twitter feed of NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, which told a different story:

BREAKING: The board for NPR NEWS has just ousted CEO Vivian Schiller in the wake of video sting by conservative activist of a top exec.

Folkenflik followed up that tweet with another that underscored the involuntary nature of Schiller’s departure:

LISTEN to my discussion coming up in a few minutes on NPR’s Morning Edition. To repeat: NPR CEO Vivian Schiller forced out by board.

NPR made it seem a little more voluntary:

NPR just sent this statement from NPR Board of Directors Chairman Dave Edwards to its staff and member stations:

“It is with deep regret that I tell you that the NPR Board of Directors has accepted the resignation of Vivian Schiller as President and CEO of NPR, effective immediately.

“The Board accepted her resignation with understanding, genuine regret, and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past two years.

“Vivian brought vision and energy to this organization. She led NPR back from the enormous economic challenges of the previous two years. She was passionately committed to NPR’s mission, and to stations and NPR working collaboratively as a local-national news network.

“According to a CEO succession plan adopted by the Board in 2009, Joyce Slocum, SVP of Legal Affairs and General Counsel, has been appointed to the position of Interim CEO. The Board will immediately establish an Executive Transition Committee that will develop a timeframe and process for the recruitment and selection of new leadership.

“I recognize the magnitude of this news – and that it comes on top of what has been a traumatic period for NPR and the larger public radio community. The Board is committed to supporting NPR through this interim period and has confidence in NPR’s leadership team.”

So which is it? This is no point of mere semantics. NPR holds itself out as a news organization, and asks its consumers to give it credibility. Is Folkenflik misinformed, or is the board lying about their “regret” at accepting Schiller’s resignation? I’d guess it’s the latter, as NPR desperately attempts to save face after a series of scandals and botched management decisions, starting with the termination of Juan Williams last year.

For most people, though, the question of whether Vivian Schiller jumped or was pushed is academic. They’ll just note the justice of her public downfall after those scandals of the last few months, and the benefit that came from stripping the mask from NPR the last two days.

Update: Here’s another data point on NPR’s credibility from the NYT’s Brian Stelter, via Twitter:

FYI: Vivian Schiller gave no indication of any plan to resign in an interview with The New York Times Tuesday evening.

Shouldn’t a news organization be honest in reporting on its own actions?

This strikes me as a little odd, catching someone on video making remarks like that. It’s just too effortless. I mean, in this day and age if you don’t have the wherewithal to be guarded in your remarks, especially in front of what appears to be complete strangers, (even if they did pretend to want to give a huge donation) you’re an idiot and had no business holding the position you had in the first place.

scalleywag on March 9, 2011 at 10:27 AM

These people are morons who think that they are geniuses because they have the “right” degrees and associate with the “right” people.

Attempting to abrogate the consequences of their actions is their whole shtick, the prime -real- motivation of regressivism.

Newsflash folks, this is standard corporate practice. No corporation fires a director level or above and sends out a notice that they were failures at their job, hated by their staff, committed some illegal behavior or whatever! They have to cover their asses…it’s tough enough to fire ANYONE these days, so corporations always get their lawyers and HR involved and probably without exception they giving some glowing review of that executive’s time at the company and what they meant to the other executives…standard boilerplate stuff.

Oh boy, do you have that right! The sheer unadulterated stupidity of their actions makes you wonder if these airheads who’d been pulling down huge salaries at NPR could even qualify in the real world for a night manager position at the Starbucks down the street from their former offices.

Everyone loves to dis affirmative action for minorities, but white anti-American leftists have been running their own AA programs off the books for their fellow ditzy unqualified whites at NPR, PBS, CBS, the New York Times, the State Department ad nauseum since…forever!

BREAKING: The board for NPR NEWS has just ousted CEO Vivian Schiller in the wake of video sting by conservative activist of a top exec.

Anyone else find this ridiculous? Conservative Activist Video Sting!?! REALLY? Looks like she was asked some questions to which she actually answered honestly and it got her in trouble. How the h3!! is THAT a ‘video sting’???!?

I find it enormously ridiculous.
Why bother? These ignorant elites are what makes NPR and the MSM tick. Why bother firing or resigning? She’ll just slither off somewhere else and work her magic.
Ridiculous.

The tell in their news release is the phrase “effective immediately”. That is a sure give away that she was canned. They might as well have added that she “has decided to pursue other career opportunities”.

IF NPR only gets 10% of their funding from the taxpayers, they just need to pull back on their budget and live without 10% of their funding. After all, with costs on all of our everyday expenses rising at least 10% in the last year, we, the taxpayers, are living without 10% of our income.

They are the people who support the administration that does nothing while our energy costs rise more than 10% which means our food will rise by more than 10%. Now one of Obama’s propagandists will find out what it is like to be one of “little people”. So be it.

Who really cares if she was pushed or jumped? There are thousands, maybe millions, of Vivian Schillers who can replace this venereal disease at the drop of a hat. The next troll is already applying from Media Matters, La Raza, Obama Fornicating America (OFA), Tide Foundation, Annenberg, Columbia School of Journalism, the puke goes on.

Their ideas have not died and will not die until we have leadership which is 180 degrees from the brand offered by the cowardly, droopy, flaccid John Boehner.

This is quite interesting because anytime NY Times, Newsweek, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, etc… get busted for major liberal bias, they just ignore the criticisms and move on. Odd that NPR is actually reacting by ousting execs.

Glad to see this undercover sting was given credibility. I still think Planned Parenthood should be under criminal investigation for the recent sting that showed aiding and abeiting child trafficking.

OT: Screw Egypt. Libya? Unimportant. Bullying is the real problem that must be addressed.

Watch/listen while Michelle tries to read the prompter during their co-speech. I’d love to know how many takes they went through before someone decided this one was best, especially since you can see her eyes tracking Barry’s lines while he’s reading. Princeton, right?

What about that “other” person (Beth?) on that video from NPR? Did she rush to her HR and complain about what Mr. Schiller said? Or did she agree? Is she being shown the door or did that think it was really OK and since he was leaving anyway, he could take that hit.

yes, i’m so disconsolate i actually had to take the day off. my life will never be the same without schiller or npr’s minuscule federal funding.

our entire secret commie agenda is in shambles.

sesquipedalian on March 9, 2011 at 10:44 AM
Your reaction to such a ridiculous, irrelevant, nothing, non-story suggests that you mad.

Can’t figure out why, if it’s that not-big-of-a-deal.

Good Lt on March 9, 2011 at 11:05 AM

How I read it is, he’s horrified that somebody might be actually enjoying this state of affairs. He’s trying to convince us he doesn’t mind. But the vehemence with which he professes to not care kind of blows his cover.

The thing is, while schadenfreude is kind of a good time, all right-thinking people want, in this case, is just to have the government propagandists out of our pockets. We don’t care what NPR actually says; it’s all fair in a marketplace of ideas. But if you need to force money out of people who disagree with what you’re saying, just to be able to get the message out, your ideas can’t be all that good.

Let the people who actually endorse their views pay for it, like every other media outlet. And we’ll see how many there actually are.

A “related ad” showed up here on my comp. just under this article. It was for WBUR in Boston (the folks who give you Car Talk): “Donate your car, support WBUR and NPR” :)

Better that than my tax dollars. NPR and its stations get private donations (a Mr Soros gave them millions to fund biased reporters), foundation and corporate grants (a 2008 list of NPR donors even included that evil “Fox Broadcasting”), and confiscatory tax money via CPB. That last source should end. (For that matter in some cases they get money from taxpayer supported public universities)

Two blues songs:
Sonny Boy Williamson– “Get your hand out of my pocket/
Ain’t nothin’ there that belongs to you.”
Buddy Guy (from his most recent CD)–hey Vivian–
“Don’t let the door hit ya/ Where the good Lord split ya”

Alan Colmes just asked “Is that O’Keefe in that video I don’t recognize him without his pimp outfit?”

OmahaConservative on March 9, 2011 at 10:49 AM

…it is hilarious to watch Colmes and other liberals cry about “O’Keefe’s tactics” as if this changes the bigoted idiocy and bias exposed in yet another liberal media operation.
Liberals need to face the facts…
………….they weren’t “tricked” by O’Keefe….they were outsmarted and exposed by him…..yet….again.

Best guess here is that the NPR board put Vivian on double-secret probation after the Juan Williams embarrassment, and that she agreed to let Ellen Weiss get thrown under the bus in exchange for keeping her job. But that deal likely also came with a warning that Schiller would be out if the current NPR management let the mask slip and gave the game away one more time, since the network’s federal cash flow already was in danger.

The restaurant sting couldn’t have come at a better/worse time, since Weiss’ resignation was two months ago, and Schiller just felt confident enough now to start putting out the spin again that there is no liberal bias at NPR. For her to make that statement on Monday and O’Keefe to release the tape on Tuesday meant there was no way the NPR PR people or the rest of the big media could hide this screw-up; Vivian didn’t stand a chance of staying on, even if like Dan Rather or Mary Mapes, she’ll go to her grave thinking she did nothing wrong (even if it would be fun to see her tweet O’Keefe “…and I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.”)

Almost everything CPB/NPR/PBS makes has an underlying message of race. From Sesame Street to History Detectives, from American Experience to “one of the 100 most powerful people in the world” Tavis Smiley.

They have spent decades indoctrinating the public that the Indian was Pan, that caucasians are the problem with the world, and that America at it’s heart is a fiefdom.

This ‘firing’ is suppose to prove what, exactly? That NPR
is fair and balanced? What a total joke that is.